Ladybugs

It wasn’t my idea – not originally. My friend’s dad, years ago, had offered to pay her a whole dollar if she would eat a cicada, a nasty flying insect well over an inch long. He thought she wouldn’t take him seriously, but he underestimated the power of the almighty dollar. She decided it was worth the pain and – in full view of both parents – downed the bug.

This tale made quite an impression on my young mind, both for her action and her father’s dare. If I would have considered it more fully, perhaps I would have caught the hidden ending – namely, what her father undoubtedly caught from his wife after she learned he had put the girl up to it.

Now, anyone who has spent time in New England during the fall knows that after the leaf season comes the equally colorful ladybug season. All houses old enough to resist airtight insulation become infested with the little pests. They congregate in windows, on ceilings, in corners. Everywhere. Many people vacuum them up to get rid of them. Others simply ignore them. We followed a mixture of the two courses, vacuuming them up until we were sick of it – then letting them be. As the year dragged on, there were quite a few ladybugs in any given room.

It was half from a desire, then, to get rid of a few of them that I proposed this idea to my brothers. The other half came from a mischievous streak I had never outgrown. “Listen, guys,” I said one afternoon to the assembly of toddlers before me. I held up a shiny quarter and they gazed at it with wide eyes. “I’ll give a quarter to anyone who eats a ladybug.”

Phillip, the eldest, just grinned. He had seen too many of these schemes to be taken in again. Jon, however, was interested in the coin. “But if you eat it, will you die?”

I crushed that thought. “Of course not. Here, look.” I reached over to the wall, grabbed one of the ladybugs congregating there, and popped it into my mouth. It didn’t taste particularly bad, but I decided against chewing. It was the work of a moment to swallow it whole.

The younger boys stared at me – either impressed that I had done it or waiting for me to keel over dead. Phillip just gave me a knowing smile. “You’re just faking,” was his pronouncement.

“No!” I said, outraged that he would suggest at such a show of dishonesty on my part. “Watch.” I picked up another couple and dropped each of them into my mouth, slowly so all could see. I made a few chewing motions with my mouth and swallowed.

“Whoa,” Jon said. He didn’t waste any time, and grabbed one of the few I had left. There was no pretense of chewing on his part. I’ll give him credit: he didn’t even grimace.

“Good man. Here’s your quarter!” His smile couldn’t have been bigger. “Anyone else care to try?” Before I got a reply, my phone rang and I left to answer it.

Jon came into my room ten minutes later, after I had hung up the phone. “Tim! I ate two more!”

“Sweet.” I reached into my desk for his reimbursement. “How about the others? Did they eat any?” He grabbed the quarters, shook his head no, and skipped out of the room. As I turned back to my computer, I felt a sharp pain in my stomach. I took a sip of water and tried to ignore it.

By the time a half-hour had passed, though, the pains were coming every couple minutes. With a sinking feeling, I began to recall some of the peculiar defense mechanisms of ladybugs. I was about to run a search on Google to confirm my suspicions when my sister walked in. She looked about to say something, but I beat her to it. “Tell me. Ladybugs have some sort of nasty fluid in their bodies that makes birds sick, right?”

“I think so. Why?” Her expression suddenly hardened. “You, too? How many did you eat?”

“Only a few.” I rubbed my stomach, but there wasn’t a hint of sympathy in her face.

“That’s the least of your worries. Jon apparently decided he would get extra credit for eating a ladybug in front of Mom and Grammy.”

“He didn’t.”

“He did. Mom wants to talk to you.”

I looked around the room, but there was no place to hide.